


letters from home

by malapropism



Series: home is where you build your heart [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Grimmauld Place, Growing Up, Hogwarts, Hogwarts First Year, Ireland, M/M, MWPP Era, Marauders, Northern Ireland, Pre-Slash, Slow Build, Wales, a little bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:45:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/pseuds/malapropism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two weeks into their first year at Hogwarts, three boys receive letters from home and one doesn't. These are the stories of those letters, of the homes left behind, and this unfamiliar place.</p><p>Part of my <i>home is where you build your heart</i> series, a canonically based history of the Marauders at Hogwarts. Four chapters for four not-yet Marauders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peter

Peter twisted his fingers into the folds of the thick, red napkin as he carefully fixed his eyes on the sweating heap of sausages before him. He would not allow himself to scan the air above for the familiar sight of Saoirse, his grandmother's aging barn owl. It had been two weeks since he had left her tiny cottage. He had written her in his first week, to say that he was all right, that he was in his father's house. But she hadn't responded, and despite himself, that stung. Today wouldn't be any different, and he couldn't allow himself to hope for anything otherwise. He chewed resolutely.

On the first morning at Hogwarts, Peter had felt like he was drowning.

That new morning, he had jumped from sleep in sudden shock, instinctively thrusting himself up from the bed, tearing off the heavy quilt and breathing in great, greedy rasps. It was dark. The tightly drawn velvet hangings blocked out the dawn's light, and Peter fumbled blindly for the slit in the fabric. Everything around him felt foreign, wrong, _different_. This was not home.

As he rubbed the last cobwebs of sleep from his eyes, memories blew into technicolour. The long trip to London, jostling next to Muggles on buses and trains, his grandmother forever mistrustful of organised magic, of the Wizarding world, and even of Hogwarts. Watching the familiar Ardoyne streets recede behind him as he hurtled onwards, leaving behind everything he knew, going forwards to a new future by way of a trip back into his own unremembered past. Keeping his eyes on the pavement as he trembled through London, the great grey beast burning under his feet. The first home he had ever known, the home he had forgotten, the city that buried his parents. He rushed to King's Cross, into Platform 9 3/4, onto the Hogwarts Express, through to an empty carriage that filled noisily around him, as he rode silently, as he watched the world outside blur away. The stinging tears that dripped down his cheeks, that turned his skin mottled red, that trailed the thick bile of shame in their wake, kept him from seeking out James, who wouldn't find him until they disembarked at Hogsmeade Station. James' easy embrace, his welcome chatter, his brightness, his joy to be _finally_ at Hogwarts filled up Peter, buoying him as their horseless carriage swayed towards the immense castle. The Great Hall, the Sorting, the swelling feeling of _home_ that bubbled within him. The exhaustion that had settled in his bones as the Gryffindor first years were led to their beds, that sapped him of his brief sense of belonging. He fell straight into bed, drawing the hangings tightly and sleeping in his robes.

The other boys must have been tired, too, because there was little chatter on that first night. Even James, who Peter knew to be relentlessly curious and quick to poke and prod anything (or anyone) _new_ , even he turned quiet as they trod the stairs to their dormitory. He had grinned at Peter, shed his robes and flopped onto the next bed over, not even bothering to draw the curtains or open his waiting trunk. Even in exhaustion, even in sleep, everything seemed easier for James.

Peter had known James since he was born, although neither of them remembered very much of the years when they had seen each other almost every day. Peter knew the story of those first years by rote, having wheedled it from his grandmother bit by bit, treasuring each precious fact and committing it to memory: Peter had been born in London, where his parents lived in a little flat in Kilburn. His father, Archibald-but-called-Archie, was a Muggle-born wizard who worked for the Ministry of Magic. Mr. Potter had been Archie's boss at the Ministry of Magic. They worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Peter's grandmother refused to speak of the Ministry of Magic, and so this scrap of information had come from Mr. Potter himself. His mother, his grandmother's daughter, was called Treasa. Treasa worked at St. Mungo's as a Healer. When Peter's grandmother spoke her daughter's name, it was always carefully, precisely, as if she was weighing each letter in gold. Archie and Treasa met at Hogwarts, and had started dating in their sixth year. They had married when they were twenty-two. Peter was born when they were both twenty-five. They died five years later in the accident.

Peter's grandmother would never finish the story. No matter how hard Peter begged, she would not tell how her beloved daughter and her husband had died. And she had forbidden Peter from ever asking the Potters about his parents' death. Sometimes, Peter thought about breaking his promise to his grandmother, because he ached to know _why_ and _how_ , but he knew that if his grandmother ever found out, she wouldn't let me visit the Potters during the summer holidays, and he loved the _normalness_ of their house in Godric's Hollow. So he kept quiet, and pretended to be the sort of boy who was untroubled, unhaunted.

When James and Peter were little, Treasa would Floo with Peter to the Potter house before going to work. Mrs. Potter would let the boys play in the sprawling green behind the house, make them sandwiches for lunch and read them stories when it rained. Peter didn't remember any of this, and he didn't think James did, either. But Mrs. Potter would sometimes pet Peter's head absently, fondly, and recall those early days. If Peter tried very, very hard, he could almost feel the warm tingle of traveling by Floo Powder, but the memory was always quick to flit away.

Peter remembered the day his grandmother came to take him. That day was coldly bright in his mind's eye. She looked as she did now, a small thin woman with wrinkles around her eyes. She never wore robes like James' parents, but dressed in a long black skirt and a shapeless black sweater, every day of the week, every season of the year. She brought Peter to her tiny cottage in Belfast, and he never returned to London, not until it was time to go to Hogwarts.

They lived amongst a small pocket of witches and wizards in Ardoyne, a neighbourhood in West Belfast. Like his grandmother, like Peter himself, these witches and wizards had moved to Belfast from somewhere else, had always intended to move on or to move back, but the years kept passing and no one left. There were a few children Peter's age on their street, but he didn't like them very much. They teased Peter for his accent, which was tinged with the taste of being _not from here_. Peter was a foreigner amongst exiles, the bright lodestar by which they navigated the tricky dance of belonging. Peter kept quiet, learned to watch, to listen, to mimic. His grandmother called him slow, but he knew that it was better to be slow and last than quick and first when you were _different_.

Peter's grandmother taught him how to read from her old, mouldy books. He learned to read in English slowly but carefully, always carefully. But when his grandmother tried to teach Peter her tongue, the language of her mother and her mother's mother, the language his own mother had grown up with, Peter balked. Something in his young brain snapped, a wall rose up, and he couldn't get his lips around the words, couldn't hear the music in his grandmother's lilt. She persisted, but he couldn't do it, he just couldn't. She grew bitterer and bitterer as the years passed and she steeped in his not-knowing, his inability, his failure. Peter grew up knowing what it felt like to disappoint people.

Peter's grandmother had first learnt magic at the knee of her own mother, and that was the tradition of their family. It was a green kind of magic, chaotic and expansive, the kind of magic that just brims outward, the sort of magic that heals bruises and grows trees. That gift of healing ran in the family's blood, or so Peter was continually reminded by his grandmother, who had tried to teach Peter some of the old ways, but that had gone the route of the language lessons. Peter couldn't feel it the way his grandmother could, the way his mother must have. At first, he thought he just didn't _have_ it. It was like something in him was broken, or maybe just missing. Peter grew up knowing what it felt like to be incomplete.

By the time Peter had turned eleven, by the time the Hogwarts letter had arrived, Peter's grandmother was resigned to sending her grandson off to school. She did not trust the world of Hogwarts, of the Ministry. To her, it was a world in which magic was governed and restricted and bent to the will of others, and magic was supposed to be something that you kept inside of you, that you knew best of all, that your mother taught you. 

Peter's grandmother had not attended Hogwarts. She had grown up in the south, in a green place with lots of hills and a river at the edge of the town, and she had learnt of magic from her mother, and she had played with the other children in the town, some of whom had magic, some of whom did not. Their magic was practiced silently, with thoughts rather than words, and it worked in the natural ways of the world, and it never bothered the other children.

When Peter's grandmother was sixteen, she had gone into the City with her friends to go dancing. At the hall, she met a young man with long fingers and bright blue eyes and quick smile. They danced all night. She spun and spun and spun around the room, turning and turning and always turning back into his arms. At the end of the night, when her friends went home, Peter's grandmother stayed. The young man with the long fingers and the bright blue eyes and that quick, easy smile married her in a week. They were in love.

And for a while, they were happy in the City, but soon came the time when the work dried up and the young man whispered into the dark one night, as they lay in bed next to each other softly, he whispered, "We've got to go north." And so they went north.

The young man grew into a less young man, his long fingers weathered and worried by work at the shipyards in this new City, in the city of Belfast. Peter's grandmother gave birth to Peter's mother in that tiny cottage in Ardoyne. Peter's mother knew her father for a few short weeks, before a beam of wood fell from above and struck him dead.

Peter's grandfather, that young man who never grew old, had not been magical, but he had loved Peter's grandmother's magic, and he had settled his new wife in that pocket of displaced witches and wizards in Ardoyne. Some of the neighbours had gone to Hogwarts, some to other schools, but most were like Peter's grandmother. Most did not trust the kind of magic learnt in schools, governed by ministries. 

When Peter's mother was eleven, she received her letter to Hogwarts, and Peter's grandmother was angry. She felt like she had been discovered, like she had been hiding as a fugitive in a foreign land and she had been found out. She refused to let Peter's mother go, she hid the letter from her, but more letters kept coming, flying on owls' talons into open windows and down chimney chutes, clattering and banging and demanding attention. 

Treasa, who had learnt of magic at her mother's knee, found one of the letters on a hot July day, and she burst into furious, sweaty tears. She wanted to go. She loved magic, and she wanted more of it. She wanted to be in a place where everyone knew magic, where there were actual whole books of spells and charms and there were bubbling potions and something called Transfiguration, all of which was at once unfamiliar to her and yet seemed to be calling her home. Peter's grandmother was hit by the force of her daughter's anger, her desire, as if it landed with a fist. Treasa, who had learnt of magic at her mother's knee, wanted to leave. Peter's grandmother felt doubly betrayed, and she begged her daughter to stay, but her daughter was certain. She wanted to learn more than her mother could give her, and so she took buses and trains and hurtled to London, just like her son would years later, and boarded the Hogwarts Express, and began her new life.

Peter's grandmother never forgave that world for taking her daughter not once, but twice: first on a hot day in July, and then again on a cold night in January. Both times, the news came in a letter.

And so, when Peter was eleven, his grandmother knew that another letter would come, and it would take away the last bit of Treasa she had. She did not fight to keep her grandson, and so he left.

Peter had thought that maybe, just maybe, this new world would have a place for him. He thought it would be easy from the start, like slipping into a sweater you've worn a thousand times, misplaced, and just rediscovered. He hoped it would be, and for a moment it was, but then, it crushingly wasn't.

On the first morning at Hogwarts, Peter realised that for the next seven years, he would be swimming against the tide. He was painfully, precisely aware of his roughhewn accent, and he bitterly wished he hadn't worked so hard to learn the casual, curling cadence of the Belfast boys. Now he had another language to learn. He had dressed in silence, early to rise after fighting through the velvet hanging, and slipped down to the Great Hall before James, before the other two boys. He ate in silence, listening to the rising hum of happy chatter. James had appeared, disheveled and blinking, just as Peter scraped up the last of his porridge. Peter had never seen so much food in one place before, and he ate with the kind of guarded speed that all who have been truly hungry know.

"Easy there, mate! How come you didn't wake me up, I would've come along with you - bet you just wanted first crack at the table, I don't know how you manage it, always the first to start and the last to finish - " James chattered, grinning as he casually sloshed jam on his toast. Peter smiled gamely in return, because that's what he was supposed to do when James made a joke, even if it wasn't very funny, even if it was at Peter's expense. James had always teased Peter for his hunger, which James had always written off as gluttony, because in James' world, no boy went hungry. At James' house, that was true, and that's why Peter loved meals with the Potters. James had never visited Peter, and in fact, had never even mentioned it. This, for the most part, didn't bother Peter.

They had received their timetables and trotted off to their very first morning of class at Hogwarts. Peter walked with James to their first class - Transfiguration, with the stern Professor McGonagall from the Sorting - and sat towards the back of the room with him. On the walk to the Transfiguration classroom, James had kept up a steady stream of commentary on the day's classes, on what he was excited to learn, on how he couldn't wait to be able to transfigure his mother's tea cosy into a rat, just to give her a fright. James was fascinated when Professor McGonagall transformed into a cat before the Gryffindors' very eyes, but he was considerably less enthused with the elementary nature of their first lesson, and Peter could watch his eyes glaze over and slip out of focus as Professor McGonagall intoned on the complexities of Transfiguration.

Peter had been nervous about classes, and Professor McGonagall's formality (plus the hefty reading assignment she issued) did little to soothe those worries. This was not the sort of magic he was accustomed to seeing. There were complex incantations and precise wand movements and you had to say all of it out loud, in front of other people, who tended to snicker when you got the words jumbled. He kept an eye on James, who moved with a kind of intuitive grace through the practical exercises at the end of class, even though his parchment was full of nothing but little scribbles and sketches. Peter took careful notes on Professor McGonagall's lecture, but as he scanned the notes before packing up his bag, he felt as if he'd missed half of what she had said. 

That feeling stayed with Peter throughout the first week of classes. It was definitely the sharpest in Transfiguration, which Peter just knew would be his worst class. He liked, and maybe even enjoyed, Astronomy and Herbology. Charms was difficult - more wand wiggling and rhyme reciting. Potions reminded him of his grandmother, who he missed with an unexpected twinge, and while the recipes were unfamiliar, he could follow the instructions reasonably well and do passingly. He fell asleep during History of Magic, but so did half the class.

Peter spent most of his time with James, who seemed completely comfortable to have a little shadow at his elbow, a constant audience and a familiar face. They did their homework together, eschewing the Library for the Common Room; they played Exploding Snap after dinner and, at James' insistence, explored the castle during their free time. Peter had been afraid that James would leave him behind at Hogwarts, that he wouldn't be able to keep up with his bright, charming friend. Peter had spent most of the summer holidays with the Potters, as always, but during the fortnight he'd spent at home before heading off to Hogwarts, a tiny voice at the back of Peter's head had whispered that James wouldn't be his friend once his parents weren't there to ensure that Peter came over to visit, that if James had the choice, he wouldn't choose Peter. Peter watched James carefully, and made sure to be perfectly agreeable and appreciative. He knew that he had to fit himself to James, had to be whatever James wanted from a friend, in order to stay. It did not occur to Peter that James might like him for him, or for the comfort of an old friend in a new world.

Keeping up with his mounting homework while also keeping up with James amounted to an exhausting first two weeks at Hogwarts. In his rare moments of solitude, Peter contended with a gnawing feeling in ribs - not _homesickness_ , per se, but a kind of feeling out of place, displaced. Peter ached to belong in that easy way the other first years seemed to.

Of course, while James wore that carefree easiness like a mantle, Peter could see shadows in the faces of other first years. He knew, logically, that not _everyone_ found life at Hogwarts as delightful as James did. The other two boys in their dormitory were even quieter than Peter, who at least talked to James. They spoke to no one, it seemed like. The tall boy - Lupin, something or other - he at least smiled in passing. He seemed fine, and Peter thought that maybe, if he could bring himself to approach the boy, they could be friends. Like Peter, he seemed out of place, but he didn't have a James, and he kept his nose in his books. Peter wondered why he wasn't in Ravenclaw, what the Hat had seen in this boy to let him come to Gryffindor.

The other boy in their dormitory, who had the bed closest to the window, was a walking storm. He bristled at everything and everyone, and his dark mood choked out the air from every room he entered. At first, Peter thought that he had done something to anger the boy, and asked James what he'd done wrong, and James had just laughed coolly. "He's pissed he's stuck in Gryffindor, his whole family's been in Slytherin for ages and he's not used to bunking with us _common folk_ ," James had replied in a stage whisper, which carried across the room, where the Black boy's curtains were defensively drawn, but certainly not impenetrable. James did not like Black. He thought Lupin was fine, a bit odd but pleasant and easy enough to forget about, but Black got under James' skin. He was cold, often rude to James, who had spent the first couple days at school trying to draw Black out with invitations to play Exploding Snap, with questions about his life, with friendly jabs at his recalcitrance. At first, Black had just ignored James, but when James persisted in attempting to crack open his hard exterior, Black had snapped back. James wouldn't tell Peter what words had been exchanged - Peter had been in the shower during this early morning exchange - but his face turned stony at the sight of Black, who sneered right back. Peter preferred that James stay away from Black, because then Peter had an excuse to avoid the other boy, who made him feel queasy. And so, while Peter had briefly feared that James would befriend the two boys and move beyond Peter, it seemed that their duo would remain intact, and Peter was relieved at that prospect. 

On that Monday morning, two weeks into his first year at Hogwarts, as Peter was trying very hard to _not_ look up for his grandmother's barn owl, he suddenly heard a soft, familiar hoot overhead. His eyes shot up, and then - there, amongst the rest, the slightly crooked wings of Saoirse! She spun downwards haltingly, jerkily - she was old and the journey long - and dropped an envelope onto Peter's lap, and then perched on his shoulder. The envelope was addressed to Peter in his grandmother's sharp, angular hand, and the note began without salutation.

_Comhghairdeachas leat, a Peter. You've done a good thing._

Peter turned the piece of parchment in his hands, looking for more, but that was it, that was all. She had congratulated him, and Peter certainly couldn't remember if that had ever occurred before, but the note felt scant, inadequate. He folded it in half, slipped it into his pocket, and habitually checked the envelope, just in case -

And there was something else there, another slip of paper - no, it was slick on his fingers - a photograph. Peter drew the image from the envelope as Saoirse nipped his ear and creakily rose into the air, heading home.

Peter had never seen this photograph before. He only had the one picture of his parents - smiling, in their early twenties, adults but not yet parents - and this photograph was older, his parents were younger. They were laughing and turning towards each other, arms intertwined and breathless. Wind rushed through their hair. They stood on a green expanse, and Peter recognised the dark stone rising behind them as the walls of Hogwarts. This was his parents at _Hogwarts_. His mother had a spellbook under her arm, his father's red and gold scarf fluttered in the wind. They were young and happy and together, and they were _here_. Peter realised that in walking these halls, sleeping in the Gryffindor tower, eating at the Great Hall and going to his classes, he was the closest he might ever be to his parents, to the lives they had lived before their death. He had felt out of place his entire life, but maybe this place, maybe here, he could belong.

Peter tucked the photograph back into its envelope and carefully dropped it into his pocket, along with his grandmother's note. He looked around the table. To his right, James munched distractedly on a piece of bacon, his eyes skittering over his own letter from home. Across the table, Peter saw Lupin refolding a letter and placing it between the pages of his book. At the end of the table, Black sat by himself, determinedly keep his eyes down. Peter knew that look.


	2. James

James Potter had always wanted a brother, because more than anything else in the entire world, James Potter hated to be alone.

His mother always called him _precious_ and _lucky_ and _charmed_ , and so James grew up knowing he was unique, which means _one of a kind_. At first, he thought this was just because he was magical, and maybe she had been afraid to raise a Squib. But Silva Potter wasn't afraid of anything, and James' magic had been loud and dramatic and very, very _present_ , practically from infancy. Magic sparks ricocheted off the walls of his nursery, and the strands of his hanging mobile would dance in windless air. But over time, James realised that his mother regarded him as a gift of providence, and that's why he was treasured. He had been unexpected, but desperately wanted, and his very existence seemed too fantastic to believe, too extraordinary to let go unremarked. James also realised that to be one of a kind is to be without a match, without an equal.

When James was little, he would play in the streets of Godric's Hollow with the other children, the daughters and sons of witches and wizards almost exactly like his parents. He knew, from around the age of eight, that his parents weren't exactly _just_ like those other parents, because his mother's eyes were wrinkled even when she wasn't smiling, and his father's messy hair had gone silver at the edges. James' parents didn't, unlike the other parents in Godric's Hollow, have their own parents over for Sunday tea, because James didn't have grandparents. And at first, he had thought this was just some cruel aberration, some way in which he was horribly, horribly unlike other people, until the girl down the street's grandmother died, and James realised _that's what being really gone looks like_ , and he knew that's what had happened to his own grandparents, and that's what would one day happen to his own parents, and it would probably come sooner for his than for his friends' mothers and fathers. This is the kind of premonition that haunts the children of old parents, the sort of fear that restlessly ghosts their sleep. 

But for the most part, James' childhood had been _precious_ and _lucky_ and _charmed_ , and he could banish those quiet, preternatural fears. To send off the shadowy thoughts, he would decisively shake his head, a quick twist to the right and then back again, and he would draw his mouth into that bright, easy grin that made his parents happy, that kept his friends laughing, that made old Batty give him extra sweets whenever he passed by, and he would shake it all away. 

Even as a boy, James knew that he wasn't afraid of dying - although, to be fair, that really never seemed like a possibility because death was something that happened to other people -- but he was always afraid that the people he loved would die.

He was afraid that his dog Newt would die, and one day, he did, and James hid in the cupboard and cried. And he was afraid that his parents, who kept getting greyer and greyer, would die before he was ready.

While he wasn't entirely conscious of it, he was also afraid that Peter would die, because Peter was the closest thing James had ever had to a brother, and because James loved Peter in the simple, fierce way that older brothers love younger brothers. (Although Peter would be the first to tell you that James had less than four months on him, and James was definitely the immature one, thank you very much.)

Peter's parents had died when James was almost six. They were young, younger than James' parents, still bright and smooth and so alive, until they weren't. James hadn't been allowed to go to the funeral, but once, when he was almost ten, James had gone with his parents to put flowers on the Petterigrews' graves, and as he counted the numbers between BORN and DIED, James realised that you didn't have to be that old to die. He shook his head once to the right, and once to the left, for good measure. His father's hair had gone silver all over by then.

James grew up knowing that he was a gift, he was a surprise, and he did his best to always be a good one.

The night before he left to go to Hogwarts, the place he had been dreaming about for weeks, James was nervous. But he did his best to hide it. His father cooked James' favourite meal, steak and potatoes and some asparagus he didn't like as much but he grinned and ate it all, and his mother made James' favourite cake, and he got chocolate all over his lips. He played one last round of chess with his father (and lost, but only just barely); he kissed his mother goodnight before he trudged up the stairs to his bedroom. His neatly packed trunk stood at the foot of his bed, ready to travel. James lay restlessly beneath his handmade, sky-blue quilt and waited for sleep.

And while he was nervous, James was also painfully excited for Hogwarts. He had grown up listening to his parents talk about their schooldays, about the classes they had taken and the delicious feasts and the Hogsmeade visits and the Quidditch losses and finding each other on a quiet wintry day at the edge of the lake, just by accident, and falling in love, a little on purpose. But mostly, because James was young and there had always just been one of him, James remembered the stories of the friends they made, and the adventures they had. And James wanted that.

When James was younger, he had begged his parents for a brother, like many little boys do. His mother would just smile and say _Maybe someday_ and her eyes would float and fade away, like a ship falling off the horizon line. His father wouldn't say anything at all, silent save for the line of his shoulders, which spoke volumes, and eventually, James stopped asking. His parents gave him everything he asked for, except for the thing he wanted most of all.

James had always had playmates on the streets of Godric's Hollow, and he had been well-liked, often the leader of their mischief-making. But he always felt like he outran his friends, like he was moving too quickly for everyone else, half-waiting for someone to catch up and outpace him. And so, even as a young boy, even surrounded by other young boys and girls, James felt alone. It felt a little bit like a masquerade with these friends, like he was acting the part of James Potter, like his grin was a mask for something else, for everybody else.

Peter came close to being the brother James had always wanted. He filled certain important criteria: he had always been there, and always would be. But Peter was like the brother you're born into caring for, not the comrade-in-arms who shares your buzzing hive mind, who completes not just your sentences but your movements, who can one-up you but also knows when to temper your fire. Peter was just _there_ , and James loved him, in his boyish sort of way. James had been taught to take care of Peter, to protect him from the unwittingly sharp jabs of other children, who didn't understand how hard Peter's life had been, and to stick up for this perennially bruised boy, but to be careful to never treat him differently. And that meant keeping his mask on a little longer, keeping the grin sprawling across his lips and pretending to be himself, pretending to be enough, because that's what Peter needed. James was committed to protecting Peter at Hogwarts, to sticking together no matter what, but a small part of James still fervently hoped to find the brother he had always wanted but never had. 

Mostly, James didn't want to have to try so hard. 

His mother had found her family at Hogwarts. Before she had been Silva Potter, she had been Silva Selwyn. She had come to school an orphan, born into a penniless branch of that pureblood line. Her parents died when she was barely three, and Silva had been taken in by a neighboring wizarding household. That witch and wizard, both Muggleborn, had always wanted a baby, and they got Silva, and Silva got a family. But it wasn't until Hogwarts that she found her brothers and sisters, her fellow Gryffindors. James grew up listening to his mother's stories of finding not just _friends_ , but siblings, bound together with a kind of closeness that James envied, recognising its absence in his own life. He couldn't wait to find the rest of his family. And in her fifth year at Hogwarts, Silva had gone on a date with Stuart Potter, and that had brought her a different kind of family. But that wasn't on James' mind, not just yet. He was, after all, only eleven.

On a warm day in the summer before he left for his first year at Hogwarts, James went rifling through the old leatherbound photo albums his parents kept in the den. He wanted to liberate a few memories to tuck under the neatly folded robes in his new school trunk. He was a little embarrassed at the rush of _feeling_ that propelled him towards the cabinets, but once he cracked the spines on his childhood, his embarrassment abated. Here were photographs of an antsy, bouncing baby James, his father reaching out to take the twitching bundle of baby. There was a photograph of James on his first broomstick, receiving guidance from his mother, who had been the Gryffindor Seeker in her day. A decade of birthdays, camping trips, holidays, and snowball fights, interspersed with snapshots of a happy child with his happy parents. James plucked a few images and put the albums away. As he reached into the cabinets to tidy the volumes, he noticed a small, paperbound book towards the back, and he drew it into the light.

It was unmarked, but clearly much older than the still-stiff red albums tracking his own childhood. He gingerly opened the book to its first page, and James felt a shock course through his body as he looked at faintly yellowed photographs peeling up from the page. Here were his parents again, but younger than he had ever seen them - just barely graduated from Hogwarts, and smiling at the camera, standing proudly in front of their home in Godric's Hollow. The house looked much the same, but the trees were a little closer to the earth and the paint a little fresher. James flicked through the pages, pausing at the photographs of his parents' wedding. His father looked a little terrified, his mother had tears in her eyes. But above all else, they looked happy. James kept turning the pages, curious to see what would come next, in the years before him. 

Snapshots of their early days: his mother in the garden, shaking a shovel at the camera-holder; his father reading by the fire; a dinner party with their friends, all so very young.

And then, James turned to a photograph of his mother, leaning against the front door, lit by the setting sun, smiling explosively, her hand over her gently curving stomach -

and James turned the next page a little too quickly, leaving a small tear in the fragile paper, as his eyes skated over more pictures of his mother, who kept swelling, who kept smiling, who was improbably young, too young -

and then his father, holding a tiny baby with his mother's light brown hair, which James knew was all wrong, because he knew he'd been born with ink black tufts, he'd seen it -

and then his parents, pictures of _his_ parents, holding that tiny baby as it got a little bigger, and then a little bigger, its fists curled tightly around his father's thumb, twisting excitedly in his mother's lap, and then -

the photographs, they stopped, and the pages went blank, and James turned them furiously, but there was nothing left.

James exhaled softly, and turned back to that first photograph of the baby, in his father's arms, and peered down at the image. The baby's blanket was bright blue, and it had a name embroidered in yellow at the edge, and James leaned close to the page and stared through his horn-rimmed glasses, and read the name:

 _James_.

The summer air turned purple with heat as the days tilted towards September 1. James didn't mention his discovery to his parents. He tried not to think about that tiny baby, and what happened to it - what happened to the first James, to the brother he never had and the person he was supposed to be. But sometimes, late at night, as he looked out his window at the darkening sky and watched the stars sweat, he could see his young father's smile, perpetually widening, and James would shake his head once to the right, and whisper, "No," into the still air. And eventually, he shook that memory right out of his head, right out of his dreams. 

He didn't ache for a brother quite as much anymore.

And in those summer days, the days before he left, he was happy, because James Potter was a happy boy. Because it was easier to be unquestioningly, unthinkingly happy. But underneath all that _happy_ , some part of James felt unmoored. When he finally stepped into the Great Hall at Hogwarts, he was certain of something for the first time in weeks. He would be Sorted into Gryffindor, like his mother, like his father, but this new place, his new home for the next seven years, it would be _all his_. No memories of that tiny baby with the light brown hair, no uncertainty, just _him_. The James that belonged.

So James grinned like he was sure of himself, mostly to convince himself, and he walked like he knew what came next, mostly to prove it to himself. And when Peter was Sorted into Gryffindor, James swallowed his relief and tossed his friend a wink, mostly to assure himself.

The Sorting Hat hadn't liked James very much, if Hats can be said to have personal feelings towards eleven-year-old boys. At least, that's what it felt like to James, as the Hat had whispered _little lion_ in his ear, and sent him to Gryffindor, but with words of admonishment. James had turned over those words as he closed his eyes in his new dormitory, pretending to fall asleep abruptly to avoid conversation before bed. He wasn't ready to put on his grin and be James Potter just yet.

James was grateful for Peter in those first two weeks at Hogwarts, in a way he'd never been before. He had always taken Peter's presence as surety, even when they were apart. He knew that Peter needed him, and so Peter would always be there. But at Hogwarts, James quickly realised that there were _options_ , and that meant Peter might not need him so much. So James was careful to keep Peter close, to drag him on all his wanderings of the castle, to insist on homework by the fire, to walk to the Great Hall and eat breakfast together every morning.

Peter was a reminder of life before Hogwarts, of home, and James was a little bit homesick in those first weeks, even though home felt a little less _his_ these days. He missed his father's cooking and the way his mother sang along to the wireless. He missed the stretch of green behind his house and the way the air tasted as fall blew in on the night wind. He missed his sky-blue quilt and the familiar faces of Godric's Hollow. Some of those faces were at Hogwarts, sure, but in this unfamiliar setting, they felt foreign and faraway. James was just barely able to keep his grinning mask in place as he walked the corridors of Hogwarts with Peter at his side. The happiness, the immense possibility, of his first meal at Hogwarts on the night of the Sorting had faded a little.

In his first days at Hogwarts, James extended himself, stretching towards friendship with the other two boys in his dormitory, because he knew that was what he was supposed to do. 

Lupin had the bed next to James, but as he was almost always first to rise and last to tuck in, James found that he rarely saw the tall boy, save for their shared lessons. Lupin was a meticulous, careful notetaker, and he seemed intently focused on each lecturer, even in History of Magic. Occasionally, James would catch sight of Lupin at the table in the Great Hall, or in their common room, but it seemed like the boy was always in motion, always just about to leave. James' attempts to chat with Lupin were met with a perfectly constructed smile and a kind of guarded blankness in his wide, amber eyes. James could tell that he was not wanted, and so eventually, James simply gave up on inviting Lupin to play Gobstones with him and Peter, stopped trying to talk to him between classes, and slid into an easier routine of smile-and-wave. Lupin was always pleasant, responsive, and distant.

The other boy, Black, was anything but pleasant. Just looking at him set James' teeth on edge.

James had felt the pulse of tension in the Great Hall when Black had been Sorted to Gryffindor, although he didn't entirely understand what the problem was. _Who wouldn't want to be in Gryffindor,_ James had wondered. He got his answer a couple nights later in the common room, when he overheard murmured gossip between three sixth year boys: _Whole family's been in Slytherin,_ and _Dark as they come, wonder what the Hat was playing at_ and _Arrogant little bastard, look at how he storms around here, like he's too good for the rest of us_.

James wondered what it must feel like to not fit in anywhere.

At first, James had extended the same eager friendliness to Black as he had to Lupin, with the same lack of success. Except where James had simply found a careful sort of emptiness in Lupin's eyes, he saw nothing but bitterness in Black's. Black responded to kindness - and James was entirely certain that kindness had propelled him forward, and not curiosity, not in the least - with acidic silence, with snarl of his thin lips and a stare that looked straight beyond James, like there was nothing of value to behold. 

The rage of eleven-year-old boys is innately weak. It is usually petty. It resides in tightly curled fists that hang limp, without force. It sounds with unbroken vocal cords. All too often, it is the snapping teeth of a dog that's used to being kicked, instinctive and only dangerous to those who dare to get close.

One day, James got too close.

It was their second Saturday at Hogwarts, and the faint morning chill had been dispelled by a clear, bright sun. Lupin was quick to slip out of the dormitory, the whisper of his drawn bed hangings nudging James from slumber. By the time he had pulled the sleep from his eyes, Lupin was out the door. Black was stirring, but Peter continued to gently snore.

James rose and shook Peter into consciousness, ready to begin their day. The previous evening, the boys had decided - or rather, James had declared - to go out onto the grounds of the school and examine the easily excited Whomping Willow after breakfast. Peter drug heavy limbs to the shower as James pulled on his robes. Black had risen, too, and gone to stand at the window, tearing his fingers slowly through sleep-tangled curls.

"Oy, Black," James heard himself call, in spite of his better judgment. "Peter and I are going to have a look around the grounds, d'you want to come along?"

Maybe it was just one invitation too many, or maybe it was too early in the morning, or maybe something else entirely. But Black bit back, turning and snarling with a kind of fury that settles leaden on an empty stomach. 

"Look, Potter, just _fuck right off_ ," and James tensed at the coarseness of these words, some of Black's first in almost two weeks. It wasn't until that moment that James realised he couldn't remember ever even hearing the other boy speak, and now suddenly, he was shouting.

"I don't want to be your friend. You aren't worthy of me. I don't consort with trash like you," he spit through sharp teeth, and even as James felt his own anger lurch forward in response, a small part of him considered how mechanical, how strange, those words sounded on the tongue of an eleven-year-old boy. Briefly, James remembered what the older boys had said about Black's family, and he wondered what kind of parents would teach their son to hate. But then, Black's caustic attack brought James back to attention, as he burned on: "And I'm not like your little friend," and here Black jerked his chin towards the shower, towards Peter, "I'm not going to go groveling at your feet, following you wherever you go, like some pathetic, sniveling rat -"

James could have ignored the strangely formal slights, but the brutality Black deployed when speaking of Peter, that drove James into action. He straightened his shoulders as he strode across the room and thrust himself right into Black's face. He spoke quietly, quickly: "No wonder you're always alone. You're the pathetic one, Black. Got yourself stuck here with us _trash_ , but you know what, I don't see any of your kind hanging about with you, don't see you getting any letters from home. I was just trying to be polite, but forget it. No one wants to hang around - sorry, _consort_ \- with you anyways."

Silence sank into the room, broken only by Peter's entrance into the room, pink from his shower. He glanced at James, who quickly fixed his coldest smile and turned away from Black.

"C'mon, Peter. I'm starving, and we've got stuff to get on with. Hurry up and get dressed," James said cheerily. When he and Peter left for breakfast, Black had turned back to the window, his tensed fingers gripping its ledge.

After that morning, James stopped speaking to Black. He soured every time the other boy crossed his path, and when Peter asked James about Black's anger in whispered tones that Sunday, James had delighted in the chance to throw a barb Black's way. For his part, Black mostly avoided James and Peter; in fact, he seemed to avoid everyone.

That Monday, James received another letter from home. His mother wrote often, chatting about the town goings-on and the final yields of her garden and how much she missed him. His father would scrawl notes in the margins of his mother's carefully inked letters. James was grateful to receive these little reminders of what he had left behind.

Grabbing a few more pieces of bacon, James carefully hid his surprise at the sight of Peter's old owl. Peter's first letter from home. While Peter hadn't mentioned it, James knew that his grandmother's silence stung. 

Across the table, Lupin's empty amber eyes flitted down the page of his own letter from home. James felt a faint stirring of curiosity as he watched the tall boy refold his letter, wondering what sort of parents he had, what sort of home he came from. He pushed his questions to the back of his mind; Lupin was a closed book, and he wasn't all that interesting, anyways.

Towards the end of the table, Black moodily speared his eggs, glowering at the plate before him. James' smile instinctually faltered, hooking into a scowl as he regarded at Black, who was - he noted with some smugness - still letterless. _Serves him right,_ James thought. 

James could forgive a lot - he had been taught to allow others their errors, to be generous and to be kind. But he had also been taught to protect his own, to stand up for those who couldn't defend themselves. James Potter had been taught to hate a bully, and that was, he thought definitively, settling the matter for good in his mind, exactly the sort of boy Black was.


	3. Sirius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a lot longer to write than I would've liked, and I'm still not totally happy with it. This whole story is really just intended to let me headcanon my Marauders so I can go on to more plot-based narratives - because I have, in a loose sense, a whole seven years of Marauders-fic planned out - but I really struggled here, trying to get backstory to blend with the present at Hogwarts. Anyways, if you're reading it - and I'm not entirely sure if I have any readers, if I do you ought to comment, reveal thyself, etc. - stick with it! I'm going somewhere, I promise. (This extra applies here - the Marius Black stuff is there for a reason, I swear.)

_Marius Black was born in the war._

_Born in the spring of 1917 to Cygnus and Violetta Black, born the third of four, born as war rattled the windows of the world, although the walls of 12 Grimmauld Place never even trembled. He was a wartime baby born to a family unaware that outside, the world was changing._

_Sometimes, the wars of Muggles are battles waged with marionettes. These are wars with strings attached, where all the political machinations and military assignations are turn on the anger of wizards. Generals become foot soldiers, unwitting pawns to their magical commanders, and entire battles are fought without a drop of magical blood shed, while rivers of Muggle blood run red in the gutter. It sounds horrible, to tell it like this, but the truth is, it's messy and it’s complicated. The Muggle world and the wizarding world are not as separate as some like to pretend. We’re all caught in this tangled, heaving snarl; the web of magic weaves all. So sometimes, when the wars of Muggles are really the wars of wizards, neither party is particularly wise to it, and it’s not as if you can just blame wizards for the bloodshed. War isn't merely a game, you see. Wizards don’t just sit in drawing rooms and strategise the deaths of Muggle soldiers, all to prove a point. Or rather, they don’t do it any differently than the Muggles might._

_But sometimes, Muggles get themselves embroiled in war all on their own, and Marius Black was born into such a war. This was simply the first war of Marius Black's short life._

_The second war came in Marius Black's seventh year, although the reconnaissance which informed it had begun years prior. You see, Marius Black was being watched; he had been watched all his life, much like you have been and will be. And as the years passed and certain facts proved incontrovertible, Marius Black was found wanting. Marius Black had been found out, you might say. Marius Black was the enemy._

_The war on Marius Black began quietly, as some wars do. Swords were not yet drawn, guns not yet fired, wands not yet bared. But by the time Marius Black was eleven years old, he was no longer being watched. His fate was decided._

_Marius Black was not what he should be, and so he was marked a traitor, a deceiver, because Marius Black was not a wizard._

_What he was - that word cannot be spoken within the walls of Grimmauld Place, as you well know. And on September 1 of his eleventh year, when the undeniable could no longer be denied, Marius Black was taken prisoner of war. Mother and father turned judge and jailor, and they locked their shame in the deepest recesses of the battlefield that was Grimmauld Place, in the basement. The prisoner was fed thrice daily, allowed light and water, books and bedding. If he wanted for something, he had simply to write it on a sheet of parchment and slip it under the door at the top of the stairs, and a house elf's wrinkly hand would clench around the note, and the request would be fulfilled. The terms of his capture might be inhumane, but his quarters were not entirely without some pity. For the most part, he was simply ignored. His capture stank not of cruelty but of inevitability, as if this were the only option, as if this is simply what one did with a traitor like Marius Black._

_Seven years passed, and Marius Black remained a prisoner._

_The war was now over, and the world had forgotten about Marius Black. He was still fed thrice daily. He was, occasionally, allowed out of his cell, out of the basement and into the house, on days when its inhabitants - his mother and father, his judge and jailor - were out, always under the careful care of the house elf. That house elf, who would sit with Marius Black in his basement, who would prepare his meals and unlock his door and show him small scraps of kindness, that house elf was the only person Marius Black spoke to for seven years. That house elf was a prisoner of her own kind, relegated to the demeaning duty of watching after this family secret. She was a good elf, by my standards; a failure, by her masters._

_And when Marius Black was seventeen, he left 12 Grimmauld Place. The house elf unlocked the door on a spring day in 1933, and Marius Black just walked away._

_You see, that's what happens to boys like Marius Black when they're born into family's like that. Families like ours. They won't be abandoned, they won't be starved to death, not anymore, not in this day and age. But they'll be left alone, imprisoned in their own homes, and set free as soon as they can be, as soon as the world will take them. When a boy like Marius Black turns eighteen, he walks away from magic forever._

_Marius Black was ready to go. Marius Black had learnt to hate magic and to despise the world of his family, which had named him enemy and imprisoned him. And now that he was free, Marius Black was ready to build himself a new life._

_But what is a boy like Marius Black to do? What has he got in his favour? What possibilities lie ahead for him?_

_Marius Black did what many boys like Marius Black must do. Not just Squibs - for that's the word, for what Marius Black was - but also many Muggle boys who are punished by their families for being different. Boys like that go to war._

_And so, in the spring of 1933, when he was seventeen years old, Marius Black went to war for the third time._

_Real war had not yet descended, but when it came, Marius Black had already been training for years. In a way, he had been preparing to fight his entire life._

_When war came, its maw was jagged and it devoured everything in sight. It devoured Marius Black, who fought with his fellow men on foreign soil, who came bursting out of a great metal monstrosity and charged, who fought and fought until his blood ran in gutters of the earth. This war, the war that really did change everything, wasn't entirely a Muggle war, nor was it entirely a wizarding war. We were all mixed up in this fight, but it's true that those on the frontlines, those were mostly Muggles. And Marius Black. He fought well._

_Marius Black was blasted from this earth twice in his short life. The first came on a spring day in 1933, the day Marius Black turned seventeen and walked away. His father took his wand to the tapestry emblazoned with our family history and blew Marius away, like that was just the end of the story. The second came on a grey day in 1941, when Marius Black - who was twenty-four years old, going on twenty-five, whose story had kept unfolding - was blasted away, blasted to pieces._

_Marius Black died in the war, just as he was born, just as he had lived._

Upon reaching the last inked line, _just as he had lived_ , Sirius Black lifted his eyes from the piece of parchment that told the story of Marius Black and sank back into his red and gold pillows. Sirius had unfolded, read, and refolded the parchment so many times over the last two weeks, it was already going soft at the corners. On his first night at Hogwarts, he had been surprised to find the envelope, addressed in the angular scrawl of his Uncle Alphard, tucked into a corner of his trunk. Alphard must have escaped the fray of Sirius’ sending-off party on his last day at Grimmauld Place. He hadn’t noticed his uncle’s absence that night, but then again, he’d been busy ferreting out abandoned wine goblets and quickly draining their last drops, avoiding his mother’s talon-like grasp.

Sirius’ skin shivered as the unwelcome memory of the sending-off party took hold of his weary mind. He curled into his blankets. It had been almost two weeks since he had left his family, and for the most part, he simply refused to think of them, of their silence and his failure, but late at night, in those hours before sleep took him, he couldn’t help it. Burying his head beneath the thick, red bedding, suddenly grateful for the drawn hangings, Sirius bit his lower lip and screwed his eyes shut. He could not escape the memory, couldn’t help but see his mother’s feverish smile, his father’s blank eyes, his brother’s trembling shoulders.

It has been a special day at Grimmauld Place. On the afternoon before the party, his father had brewed a golden potion and brought a brimming goblet of it to his mother's bedside. Sirius had knelt at their slightly ajar bedroom door and watched his father press open his mother's jaw and pour the potion down her throat in a curiously tender gesture. By supper, his mother was flitting about Grimmauld Place, having shed her dressing gown for the first time in days, glittering. 

It had been Orion Black's idea to celebrate his elder son's imminent departure for Hogwarts with a party, although this ostensible milestone was in truth nothing more than an excuse for Orion to draw together the Black family. The landscape of the wizarding world was in flux, and when lines were drawn, Orion Black knew that he and his family would stand on the side of power. His wife Walburga's brother had already begun to boast of his eldest daughter's cunning bravery, her political acumen, her alliance with a cadre of witches and wizards who fancied themselves stewards of pureblood lineage. Cygnus' stories made for interesting talk over drinks with their friends, that elite pureblood stratum of wizarding society, but Orion rather thought that Cygnus had forgotten his place within the Black family. Bellatrix might style herself a crusader for the sanctity of wizarding blood, but it would be _his_ son who would assume the mantle of the Black family. It would be his son who would wield family influence and inheritance to preserve the position of the Black family for the future. These matters were not simply a question of bloodlines, but also of breeding, of power, of politics.

Like his father before him, Sirius would attend Hogwarts, graduate to a respectable Ministry position, advance himself promptly, and then retire from public service to begin his real work: that of backroom strategy and calculating whispers, handshake deals and the careful meting out of favour. Sirius would, like his father, rule without the banality of office. Orion had worked diligently to impart a sense of fidelity and obligation in his elder son, to teach Sirius what it meant to be a Black, but Orion was never sure if the lesson quite _stuck_. Orion found his son hard to read, a boy inscrutable from birth, temperamental like his mother, prone to lashing out without cause. Sirius seemed perpetually on edge, restless.

But he was young yet, Orion reasoned, as he watched Sirius skulk at the fringes of his own party. He had time to grow into the easy grace of his birthright, into the surefootedness of his privilege, into the expectation of his last name.

That night before King’s Cross, that last night at home, Sirius was confronted with a parade of distant relatives and family friends-in-high-places, many of whom were strangers to the ostensible guest of honor. His uncle Cygnus and aunt Druella were in attendance; they were frequent visitors to Grimmauld Place, often bringing along their three girls, Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa. Sirius and his brother Regulus had spent many stilted afternoons stuffed into their best dress robes, staring moodily across a tea service at the three sisters, as Druella simpered softly at the brothers. (“Going to grow up to be such fine boys, and doesn’t Sirius have his father’s eyes, oh how lovely, just look at the pair of you.”) The three girls never paid much attention to Sirius and Regulus, instead preferring to whisper amongst themselves, hands flashing and hair whipping about in that secret language of sisters.

On those afternoons, Sirius' mother would teeter down the stairs for tea, but as the years passed, that became a rarer and rarer sight. His mother was what Druella called _a delicate soul_ , and what his father called _not right in the head_ and so she was best left alone, according to all involved. Of course, no one bothered to ask what her sons thought of this.

Alphard had also descended upon Grimmauld Place for his nephew’s party; Sirius had not seen his uncle since his eighth birthday. On that occasion, Alphard had appeared on the front steps uninvited and unannounced, tossing a sack of Honeydukes chocolate at Sirius and Regulus, twisting around the drawing room in a frenzy, speaking in too-loud tones about things that Sirius could not quite understand, in a way that made Orion wince. That afternoon, Walburga had considered her brother as if at a great distance, as if she were enveloped in a heady fog, as if she were looking at a ghost. Shortly after he arrived, he was gone again. Orion had pressed a small pouch of clinking gold galleons into his palm, curving a firm hand around his too-thin spine, driving Alphard out to the street. And once he had gone, Orion’s black temper snapped, and he shattered a floor-length mirror in the great hall with his fist, roaring about _layabout brothers who only turn up for money, who only turn up like that,_ and while Sirius didn't understand what it meant to be _like that_ , he knew it was bad. He had not seen Alphard in a long time; he looked older, now. He didn’t look like _that_ anymore, he just looked tired.

But others at his party, they were only familiar in fracture: he found himself in pairs of matched grey eyes, saw his brother's dimpled chin, his father's ivory nose, his mother's thick, dark curls. Sirius had never seen so many people milling about his childhood home. Visitors to Grimmauld Place were usually heavily cloaked, furtive figures rushing to exchange heated whispers with his father, or members of the immediate family paying their obligatory respects to his parents. It had been this way forever, Sirius reckoned, although he had once found a box of dusty photographs that attested to the contrary, tucked away in his father's library, which was _strictly off-limits_ and thus inescapably tantalising to a nine-year-old boy who doesn't know better. The photographs captured a different sort of life for his parents, one that glowed and danced and was replete with young, pretty well-bred men and women sipping from silver goblets and laughing at the camera flash. These photographs, unceremoniously boxed up and hidden away, showed his parents having _fun_. Sirius had never seen his mother smile like that before, so simply. She looked pretty and smooth and unshadowed. Sirius had pocketed one of the photographs, a candid snapshot of his father in mid-bow, asking his beaming mother to dance, and stuffed the rest away.

But that was a lifetime ago, and 12 Grimmauld Place had been dark and shuttered for many years now.

After Regulus was born, Walburga Black had sunk into herself, collapsing into her own dark star, and she had never really emerged. She would appear in flashes, spurred by fitful spurts of energy that threatened to tear her apart from the inside. She was unpredictable, and in the world of the Blacks, that meant _embarrassing_ , and so Orion shut her away from the world. Orion hid his home as best he could, and he protected the family name as its primary emissary, and he left his wife to her own devices. Sometimes, she would shriek with fury at the walls that threatened to contain her. Sometimes, she was sickly sweet, cloyingly attentive, drawing one of her sons into a too-tight embrace. But her teeth were sharp, and her restless mind was always shifting. She burned with horrific energy, and on the worst days, the Black brothers learned to hide in the darkest corners of their family home, lest she burn them up too. These were the dark days, and Sirius grew up knowing their acrid taste. And in the last years, she was only getting worse, and those moments of fire and fury had taken on a kind of cruelty that spit and swore, sending her two sons cowering for cover.

But for the most part, Walburga Black slept, only walking to stalk the gloomy halls in a haze, looking at her sons as if they were spectres, just another two ghosts haunting the twisting corridors of her broken mind.

Sirius could not remember anything but this; he had always known his mother to be a cataclysm. Orion seemed calculatedly indifferent to even her most intemperate moods, only stirring himself to put out the fires she left in her wake, lest she burn down his precious fortress. And with his mother flickering in and out of reality, the business of bringing up Sirius and Regulus had fallen to Orion.

The house elf Kreacher took care of the cooking and the cleaning, and at Orion's command, taught Sirius and Regulus to read from pureblood genealogies and wizarding histories. Kreacher quizzed the Black brothers on their vast, recursive family lineage, and showed them little pieces of basic spellwork and potionmaking. Devoted to Walburga, Kreacher groveled at the family name, whispering to the young boys how lucky they were to be of such standing, how important it was to protect their family name. This was the rhythm of their childhood, the background music of their early years.

Orion was often absent, concerned with the work of secretive governance, but when he returned to Grimmauld Place, he busied himself with the real education of the Black brothers.

Orion taught his sons that to be _special_ is to be better than the rest. That some families are chosen by history and charged with the duty to protect the purity of the wizarding race. That purity of blood doesn't necessarily guarantee good breeding, but it is a prerequisite. That power is a family affair.

Orion taught his sons to dismiss the world outside Grimmauld Place, the world outside the Black family. Orion lectured his sons in the entitlement of their birthright. Orion promised his sons that only blood could be trusted, and that other people would always try to trick you. Other people would always want something from you.

The failures of the world, the foibles of the Ministry, all that was _wrong_ with society could be attributed to _bad blood, bad breeding_. The world could be explained by genealogy, and the future was written in blood. And as long as people like the Blacks remained in power, there was a chance that these wrongs could be righted. That work, the work of righting the world, fell upon men like the Blacks, boys like Sirius.

Sirius did not question the life his father described, because he had never known any other alternative. But some small part of him bristled at the rules, the weight, the obligation. He wasn't sure he wanted to grow up to be a man like his father. The world Orion described for Sirius was one of with little room for gray, little room for ambiguity, and Sirius wasn’t entirely certain that he fit into the black-and-white universe his father was offering. Sometimes, he would lash out in his childish ways, but by the time he turned eleven, he had learned that the consequences of rebellion were great, its reward small.

And while he had Regulus, Sirius grew up lonely. At the pit of his stomach, he felt a peculiar sort of isolation, like the pang you can get even in an immense crowd. The kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being left alone, and everything to do with feeling like you’re the only one, the odd man out.

So Sirius had gone to Hogwarts, to begin the life his father had promised, to be Sorted into Slytherin with the rest of his family and their friends, the first step towards becoming a man worthy of his name. Sirius didn’t intend to rebel against his family’s expectations; he didn’t want to thwart his birthright. It didn’t really even occur to him that he had the choice. But he had left Grimmauld Place with the tiniest seed of hope buried deep in his gut, and it threatened to bloom. At Hogwarts, maybe the gnawing restlessness that rattled his skeleton would subside. At Hogwarts, maybe the loneliness would abate. 

 

But from the very start, it had all gone wrong, and now weeks later, Sirius still couldn’t sleep. 

The fresh memory of the Sorting swelled bitterly in Sirius’ chest. _”Gryffindor,”_ the Hat had spit from its jeering brim, propelling Sirius forward with the force of its pronouncement. His entire family had been Sorted to Slytherin, and they had expected the same of Sirius. And while Sirius had always chafed slightly under the weight of familial obligation, it was easier to play the part. That was the blessing of being a Black: the absence of uncertainty, the guarantee of a comfortable life, lived by a script already written. And in his first steps toward that life, Sirius had already slipped. In his eleven years of living, Sirius had never been the object of ridicule, never been something to be stared at with the kind of curiosity usually reserved for freaks.

He had never felt more _alone_ than he had these past weeks, even though he was perpetually grinding up against his fellow students, having to steal moments of solitude where he could. He needed the quiet, needed the space to sort through things on his own. And so he snapped at Potter, who kept prying, who kept trying to draw him out, and he glared at Pettigrew, who trembled before him, and Sirius couldn’t help but be a little pleased at that. The third boy in their dormitory, the tall one with the strange eyes, Lupin - he never tried to get close, he stayed away, as if he knew that beneath it all, a storm was roiling. 

_I’m glad they’re not bothering, I wouldn’t want them anyways, I don’t even belong here,_ Sirius thought over and over again, a chorus of defiance, a talisman to keep the doubt away.

 _Already a failure, always a mistake,_ the dark voice in the back of Sirius’ mind whispered back.

And on that night, just another night at Hogwarts, another sleepiness night, he pressed his face into the pillows, sucking hot air through the cotton, trying to drown out the taunt of the whispering voice. Alphard’s note, the story of Marius Black, lay discarded on the bed. For while Sirius had read and reread the parchment, he still couldn’t understand why his uncle had slipped it into his trunk, he couldn’t divine any greater meaning to the ink on parchment. It offered no comfort, only more uncertainty, and it would soon be relegated to the bottom of his truck, stuffed back in its heavy envelope, forgotten for now.

Sirius twisted underneath the still-foreign sheets, feeling fatigue settle into his fingertips. He turned over and drew a harsh, jagged breath, swallowing the metallic edge of panic off his tongue. Memories jostled for attention, bright static flashes of his father toasting him on his last night at Grimmauld Place, of the train ride to Hogwarts sitting with his cousin’s friends, of the Sorting and how it went so very wrong, of the look on Narcissa’s face when he sat down to the Gryffindor table, of the silent march to the dormitory on that first night. The faces of his housemates, of his professors, of the Slytherins _he should have been with_ swam in front of his eyes, perpetually twisted in surprise, in shock, in derision. The curtains around Sirius felt too close, too heavy, like all the air was being drawn out through the fabric’s weave, like the wooden beams above were groaning under the weight and threatening to sink. And his mind spun forwards, tilting into the future, and Sirius couldn’t help but imagine what the next seven years would look like. He had ruined everything before it had all even started, and he had braced himself for the worst from his family, but there had been nothing, nothing at all, and what could he have expected, and what could he do, and…And finally, he slept, worn through, alone.

 

The next morning, Sirius took up his usual seat at the Gryffindor table, and kept his eyes low, away from the enchanted ceiling, knowing that no owl would come for him, knowing that he was still, as always, alone. _Already a failure, always a mistake._


	4. Remus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, and I thought the last chapter took a bit. I have the next few stories in this series plotted out, so there'll be more to come (relatively) soon. Thanks for reading, and for commenting!
> 
> Also, JK Rowling’s Pottermore biography for Remus Lupin affected some of my headcanon for Remus’ own background, and so I’ve largely ignored the pieces that didn't match up. As always, I try to be accurate to the book canon, though.

Remus Lupin was a careful boy. He kept his threadbare room(s) clean, orderly. Everything had its place. He was neat, fastidious, to the point of compulsion. In primary school, his teachers would always report on his precise penmanship, his attentive expression, his diligent absorption of new material. They were impressed with careful Remus Lupin, impressed that he caught up so quickly; this was always such a welcome surprise, for a boy so new to the school. They were impressed with him, and they remained so, for about a month. Sometimes two. Occasionally three. 

But then, these teachers, they would become concerned with the inconsistencies of Remus’ work, concerned about his sudden illness. They were concerned about the bruises on his thin forearms; they were, in fact, concerned about those forearms, which suddenly - when tinted a sickly sort of yellowing purple - seemed _too-thin_. And it wasn’t always teachers who became _concerned_ , sometimes it was neighbors, or the parents of playmates (in the days when Remus had playmates who weren’t printed in well-thumbed pages). 

_You have to be careful, Remus._

Sometimes, Remus wasn’t careful enough with the hems of his shirts - a bruise bursts through - or the scabs on his back - blood speckling the cotton - or the lies on his tongue - that month’s illness forgotten, a distant funeral’s location misplaced. 

Remus got better at being careful as he got older.

Remus got better at a lot of things as he got older: better at packing up the contents of his (current) threadbare room in a cardboard box that lived under his (current) mattress, better at fading into the background of a new schoolyard, better at forgetting the people he left behind. Better at pretending he couldn’t hear his mother’s relentles, sleepless footsteps rattling across the floorboards, better at pretending he couldn’t hear the _clink_ of bottle-on-bottle as his father took out the garbage. Better at pretending he wasn’t unhappy, better at pretending he was a character from one of his books, better at pretending he could hide behind their spines.

_You have to be careful, Remus._

And he was. He had to be.

You have to be. Careful. Careful not to get too close. Careful not to let anything slip. Careful on the days when the moon hangs swollen; careful on the days when the moon is just a wisp between the stars. Careful about what you say, where you go, who you let in. Careful not to let anyone in, for that matter. Careful to shut the door, lock the door, double-check it, triple-check it, careful. Careful with your heart. Careful with your scars.

 _Careful._ Whispered, plaintively, by his mother, as she stroked his forehead gently, fearfully, the morning after. Begged by his father, sometimes shouted, sometimes spit through tears, sometimes announced as simple, inescapable fact. Silently, treacherously hissed by his own mind, on a loop that he couldn’t block out. It was the refrain he heard every day, ever since _it_ happened. 

_You have to be careful, Remus._

One day, about a year after it happened, when Remus was six years old, he asked _Why me?_ Tears slid down his mother’s face, carving wrinkles where the skin should have been smooth as polished stone. The tension of taut wire settled into his father’s spine as he twisted away from Remus’ _Why?_ , and on that day, Remus learned that you have to be careful about the questions you ask, because sometimes, it’s better to not know the answers. 

Time passed differently for the Lupins. Remus grew older not in the giant leaps of passing years like the other little boys, but in horrific, tentative lurches of month to month. The family history had a fault line down its middle, the divide between _before_ and _after_. The memories from _before_ were faded, like sepia-toned photographs, nostalgic; the realities of _after_ were raw, bloody, too-bright. 

Milestones came differently for the Lupins, too. There was _the day that monster came_ and _the day your mother left us_ , and Lyall Lupin spent anniversaries of those days drowning himself. Success had a different hue, a different taste, for the Lupins; success was staying in one place for longer than two months, finding a job with flexible hours, neighbors who didn’t ask questions, and even better, little cottages with solid basements out in the middle of nowhere. 

It wasn’t all so bad. Birthdays, you see, were always miracles, when no one was sure if you’d live to see the next, when even you were surprised to make it this far.

Remus learned that he had to be careful about a lot of things. His father taught him to be careful about other people - they can never, ever be trusted to hold your secrets - and to be careful about himself - you must never, ever forget that you are _you_ , you are not the thing that lurks in your bloodstream. Some things, Remus learned on his own: you have to be careful to hide the bottles of amber liquid around the full moon, because that’s when he gets the worst. You have to listen - do his words twist slowly, slipping over one another? - and you have to watch - do his feet fumble, scrape, give out at the ankle? You have to be careful, you have to take care, of yourself, of your people.

_You have to be careful, Remus._

Every month was a lifetime, every full moon a death, every morning after a rebirth. And mostly, Remus was grateful that his eyes opened to see the dawn on those mornings, but sometimes, he wished they wouldn’t. He wished it would be over.

But it never was, and it was always the same, it was always the same, until one day - the day Albus Dumbledore came to their front door - and it wasn’t.

But before that hot summer’s day, before Albus Dumbledore came to call on the Lupins that were left, the letters came.

The first letter, emblazoned with green ink on heavy parchment, came the usual way, by the usual sort of owl. Remus didn’t see that owl, didn’t see that letter, and Lyall Lupin burnt it with his lighter - he allowed himself a cigarette a day, he allowed himself this vice, this vice he could control - and he didn’t mention the letter to Remus.

The second letter came like the first, and Lyall burnt it in the same way.

The third, fourth, and fifth letters came all at once, and Remus noticed the flurry of owls’ wings, and he asked his father about it. Lyall lied - because sometimes, in order to be careful, you have to lie, and one of the first lessons Lyall taught his son was that _sometimes, it is more important to be careful than to be honest_ \- and he told Remus to pack. It’s time to move.  
 They were going to move that summer, anyways, and so Remus doesn’t mind going too much. He was already ready, already resigned. 

They moved to a small cottage in a coastal town in Wales, and the letters followed them. Owls’ wings cast shadows from on high, bearing tightly furled scrolls of parchment that Remus is not allowed to see. Lyall kept burning the letters, burning them to ash, and he locked the windows tightly on their first night at the cottage.

But as they woke up, the first morning in a new home, the letters were wriggling through the gaps in the cottage walls, and spiraling down the dusty chimney, and Lyall spun around and around with his open lighter, trying to burn the letters before Remus sees, and Remus was laughing, really properly laughing for the first time in months, because there’s just something _funny_ about it all. And then Remus snatched a letter from the toaster, and ripped it open before Lyall can burn it, and it’s not so funny anymore.

_Dear Mr. Lupin,  
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…_

The parchment clenched in his small fist read like a recrimination, like a cruel joke. Remus wasn’t supposed to go to Hogwarts. He knew all about the magic school, the place where is father had gone when he was a boy, like Remus. Except he hadn’t been a boy like Remus, because there were no boys like Remus.

Shooting streams of purple bubbles into the air from his cradle, Remus had shown his magic at a very young age, and his parents had been delighted. His father had grown up with magic, had gone to Hogwarts and been a studious Ravenclaw. And while Hope had grown up a very ordinary girl in a very ordinary town, she had fallen in love with Lyall’s soft brown eyes and his magic tricks and his tales of a world that rumbled alongside her own, just out of sight unless you knew where to look. Hope fell in love with knowing where to look.

For five years, Hope and Lyall Lupin spun the kind of charms that have nothing to do with magic, and everything to do with being happy. With being a perfect-fit sort of a family, where the pieces go together _just right_.

But when Remus was five years old, a monster thrashed into his window, crashed into their world, and bit his little boy flesh. And ever since, their perfect-fit sort of family had gone a little jagged at the edges, tilting off-kilter. 

The story of why the monster came for Remus on a sticky night in July wasn’t the kind of story you told little boys, but Remus wasn’t a little boy anymore and so his father explained why everything would have to change, why it wasn’t Remus’ fault, why it wasn’t anybody’s fault but the monster, why everything would be okay, why they would move heaven and earth to find a way out of the nightmare, why some nights he would feel as if he was breaking apart at the seams, why some mornings he would wake up alone, and why his mother and his father would always be there to take care of him. Lyall held his son close.

Some of what Lyall Lupin told his son was a lie. (Everything wouldn’t be okay.) Some of what Lyall Lupin told his son was truer than he could know on that first morning. (Everything would change, and then it would change again, and it would change in ways they never dreamt, and it would almost never be for the better.) Some of what Lyall Lupin told his son was wishful thinking. (There would be no cure.) Some of what Lyall Lupin told his son, some of it he said aloud because he needed to hear it. (Because it was his fault, he brought the monster upon his son, he did it, he did. He knew he was to blame, the sins of the father visited upon the son, a tiny boy with great, big eyes.) 

He didn’t tell Remus about the day he met the monster called Fenrir Greyback. He didn’t tell Remus that he was certain that he was the reason that everything changed. Not that first morning, not then. That part of the story could wait.

He told Hope, though, and she struck him across the cheek, hard enough to stain his skin with bruises in the shape of her fingerprints. She didn’t say anything to her husband for two days; she didn’t sleep next to him for three months. But Remus didn’t know about any of this, not then.

Some of what Lyall Lupin said to Remus was just true at the time. ( _Always_ is a tricky thing .)

Hope, the perfectly ordinary girl from a perfectly ordinary town, who had grown up to be extraordinary only in the perfect fit of her heart around another’s, who had fallen in love with knowing where to look, couldn’t look away and for the first time, she wanted to. As it turns out, the magic that had brought so much to her life, this new world she had found, it could take away more than she ever thought she’d have. For two years, as her son’s bones broke with every full moon, as his screams echoed in her bloodstream, as her husband twisted further and further inwards, as the search for a cure, for any sort of help, faltered, as they moved from town to town, as they sunk deeper into hiding, Hope tried desperately to look at Remus, to look in the right way, to know where to look, to see a future. To see what her own name, given to her by her perfectly ordinary parents, had promised.

Hope couldn’t look away, but she didn’t know where to look. And one morning, a morning after the full moon, when Remus was seven years old, Lyall held his son close and told him another story that wasn’t the kind of story you told little boys. But Remus hadn’t been a little boy for a long time now.

“She’s gone, Remus - she had to go, and she said she was sorry, but she had to go away.”

“But where’d she go?”

“Back home,” Lyall whispered.

“We’re already home,” Remus said. “Will she come back?”

“I hope so.”

Years passed, and homes came and went, and Remus’ mother didn’t come back. A father and his son moved when they had to, cobbling together a life in the shadow of the full moon, under the threat of discovery. Remus learned that sometimes, it was preferable to pretend to be a character in a book, and he built himself a library of lives untouched by the monster. Lyall learned that sometimes, it was preferable to look at the world through the bottom of the glass.

When Remus turned ten years old, he asked Lyall if he would be going to Hogwarts soon, in a voice that stuttered with the kind of hope he was usually too careful to allow himself. Lyall shook his head, and tried to hold his son close, but Remus twisted free and ran to his room, ran to his books. He ran away in the only way he could, into his own mind.

It wasn’t just that it would be dangerous. It wasn’t just that boys like Remus couldn’t go to Hogwarts. It wasn’t just that Lyall Lupin was afraid for his son, afraid that their life would be torn open yet again. Remus, who as a baby had levitated his stuffed animals and laughed, who as a toddler had made his dinner plate race around the room, Remus hadn’t shown even the faintest sign of magic for years. And if he did, if Remus’ magic was still there, part of Lyall feared what that would mean, what the beast inside his son might become.

In fact, Remus’ magic had flared only once since the day he was bitten, on the first full moon after Hope had gone. Lyall had taken his son to the basement of their cottage on a hill, kissed him goodbye, and locked the door in the usual way. Magical wards, heavy iron chains. Dark fell and the moon rose and Remus’ body broke apart. And when day came, the moon was gone and Remus was himself again, bloodied and bruised and sore, so sore. His throat ached from a night spent howling, and he shivered, waiting for his father to let him out.

Before Hope had left, on the full moon nights, both of Remus’ parents would stay up ’til dawn, resting their backs against the chained basement door. Lyall would take Hope’s hand. They would listen to their son’s howls, his brutal thrashing, the angry chorus of his destruction, and they would wait. As soon as the moon faded away, they would rush to their son and hold him; Lyall would heal the wounds as best he could and Hope would tilt a glass of water to Remus’ lips. They would carry their exhausted son up to his bedroom, and he would sleep, and they would take turns watching his chest rise and fall.

But on this morning after, Lyall rested his back against the chained basement door, and he wrapped his fingers around the neck of a bottle and drank until his son’s howls had faded, until everything had faded, until the world went black. Slumped before the basement door, Lyall Lupin collapsed into a thick, blinding sleep. The sun rose in the sky, burning off the morning dew, and Lyall kept sleeping, while his son waited, shivering.

Hours passed. The sun rose to its highest point and began to fall again, and still Remus waited, and still Lyall slept. Remus called out in a tangled voice, but his father wasn’t there, he couldn’t hear, and Remus was alone. All alone.

Remus curled on his side, blood drying across his arms and a dull ache settling in his ribs, and he stared at the basement door. He wished, with all his strength, that the door would fly open, that his father and his mother would appear, that it would be just like it was before. Remus closed his eyes tightly, and he imagined the door flinging open, sunlight pouring in, his mother’s cool hands…

And then, with a loud crack, the door blew open, and Lyall tumbled backwards, knocking his head on the stairs. The sudden blow shocked him into consciousness; he twisted around, blinkingly assessing his surroundings, and then throwing himself down the stairs. His face curled into horror.

“Remus, Remus, I’m so, so sorry - I don’t know how - oh no, oh - I’m so sorry, Remus - Remus…” his father rattled, his stale breath hot and acrid on Remus’ cheek, pulling his broken son into his arms. “I won’t ever do that again, I didn’t mean to leave you…”

Worn through, Remus slipped into sleep without replying, and his father carried him up the stairs. And that was the last time that Remus had shown his magic, and it was the last time that his father let him wake up alone. It was not the last time that Lyall Lupin would spend his evening drinking to the bottom of a glass, though.

And now, Remus was eleven years old, and it was another hot July day. It had been six years since he was bitten, four years since his mother had left, five days since the full moon, four days since his father had taken a drink, three days since Remus had poured the firewhiskey down the drain. 

A steady hand knocked seven times, precisely, heavily.

Lyall Lupin made for the door, hand reaching into a pocket for his wand, while Remus knelt at the top of the stairs, flattening himself against the railing, waiting. No one came to call on the Lupins.

“Who is it?” Lyall called through the flimsy door, his hand hovering over the doorknob.

“Albus Dumbledore,” a clear voice responded.

Remus had heard that name before, whispered by his parents during late night kitchen table conferences, and later, hissed by his father, part of the ongoing litany of people who had failed to help his son. Holding his breath, Remus watched from his shadowed perch. Curiosity kept Remus transfixed. Down below, Lyall’s hand hesitated, his fingers fluttering, and then he wrenched the door ajar. The man at the door - Albus Dumbledore, who was in charge of Hogwarts, that much Remus knew from the burnt-up letters - leaned forward into the light.

“Hello, Lyall,” he said pleasantly, extending a pale hand from cornflower blue robes. Lyall Lupin did not return the gesture, but he did step back into the house, allowing the visitor to enter the Lupins’ small cottage. Anger sprawled across his father’s face, and Remus held his breath. He had never seen another wizard. Lyall and Dumbledore stepped into the shabby living room, out of the pool of light welling at the foot of the stairs, and while Remus could no longer see the two wizards, he could hear them quite clearly.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” Lyall said acidly. “You’re to blame for all these damned letters. You weren’t any good when all of this started, said there was nothing to be done, and now, you’re just taunting us with these letters. Remus can’t - “

Dumbledore interrupted, his voice still calm. “I wish, more than almost anything on this earth, that I could have offered some help when Remus was hurt all those years ago. If there was a cure, if there was an answer, I would have given it to you both. I was able to exercise some influence on the Ministry, to keep Remus’ name out of the aftermath, but I know. It wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough. But I am in the position to do something now, and you know, I rather think that Remus ought to have a say in what he can and cannot do.”

Remus stiffened again; he had unconsciously shifted as he listened to Dumbledore’s interjection, leaning away from the wall and toward the voices. He heard the rustling of cloth, the soft groan of furniture and the whispering of robes against floor, and before he could draw back into the shadows, Albus Dumbledore was smiling up at him.

“Hello, Remus,” Dumbledore said pleasantly. “Would you like to join us?”

Remus stood shakily and headed towards the living room, where his father sat unmoving, silent. Lyall avoided his son’s eyes as Remus pulled himself cross-legged onto a stool.

“You have received some letters, now haven’t you, Remus?” Dumbledore asked, settling himself back into the armchair, turning to peer down at Remus.

“Yes,” Remus replied quietly. But he looked up to steadily meet Dumbledore’s gaze, which earned him a small twitch of a smile. “From Hogwarts. The magic school.”

“Precisely,” Dumbledore nodded. “I want you to come to Hogwarts, and to learn about magic with all the other children. We have a space for you, Remus. We have ever since you were born.”

Lyall shifted audibly in his seat, drawing his arms across his chest, all taut wire. But he remained silent. Again, Remus tried to catch his father’s eye, but Lyall was resolutely examining a crooked painting on the opposite wall.

Remus considered this. “Maybe, but some things change.”

Remus was only eleven years old, but he had grown up a long time ago, and he spoke like someone who had been alive for a very, very long time. 

Dumbledore leaned forward, and Remus met his gaze, and he could not look away. “You are a werewolf, Remus. But you are also a wizard. And your life, it will be hard, for reasons that you cannot control, but the person you will become - that will be the sum of the choices you make. And I hope that you will choose to come to Hogwarts.”

With that, Dumbledore turned to Remus’ father. “We can keep him safe, Lyall. Only I and Madam Pomfrey, the school matron, will know. I have already made the arrangements for Remus to safely transform while he is at school. No one will know, unless he chooses to share that information.” Dumbledore inclined his head towards Remus at that last comment, who felt a slight shudder run through his body. The notion that he might voluntarily _share_ his secret seem so implausible, so impossible. Lyall’s jaw tightened at Dumbledore’s words, and finally, he spoke.

“You can’t promise that he’ll be safe. You can’t promise that someone won’t find out, that his life won’t be ruined. And what good will learning magic do for him? What - what will it _make_ him?”

Dumbledore’s eyes flickered at Lyall’s words, at the fear that broke his voice. “It won’t make him into anything. It will simply give him the tools to be who he wants to be. His magic, he was born with it. It won’t go away, and it cannot be ignored. The world cannot be ignored, Lyall.”

Lyall fell silent once again. Remus’ heart began to race. He wanted to go to Hogwarts - he always had. But it had never been an option, because he wasn’t like the other children who would grow to become witches and wizards. He had a secret to protect. He had never been able imagine a future beyond a few months, beyond a full moon. But to go to Hogwarts, to learn magic, to be with other people who knew about the magical world…surely, surely that would be worth the risk. He would just have to be careful. And he knew how to be careful.

“I want to go,” Remus said quietly, turning to face his father.

And with those four words, Lyall Lupin deflated. Dumbledore smiled gravely. It was settled.

Dumbledore stayed for a bit longer, explaining the arrangements to Lyall, who simply listened and nodded slightly. Remus barely heard Dumbledore’s description of the full moon provisions - something about a tree, and a house at the edge of a town, and the school matron. As Dumbledore swept out into the night, he produced an unburnt letter from the folds of his bright robes, and handed it to Remus.

“I will see you soon, Remus Lupin,” he said, just before he spun on the spot and disappeared with a sharp crack.

Remus’ father retreated into himself for the rest of the summer. He didn’t restore his supply of firewhiskey, which privately relieved Remus, but he barely spoke save for necessity. One day, he left Remus alone at the cottage and came back late in the afternoon, laden down with Remus’ school supplies. But Lyall didn’t speak of Hogwarts, of Remus’ impending departure, until the night before he was due to meet the Hogwarts Express.

“I understand why you want to go, Remus. And I’m proud of you, I really am. But I wish you would - I wish you would stay here, because if you go, I can’t protect you. I can’t keep you safe.”

Lyall paused, and inhaled heavily. Remus picked at the sleeves of his shirt, a nervous habit long ago acquired. Lyall continued.

“Dumbledore has ensured that you will have a place for the full moon, but that won’t be enough. You’ll have to lie to your classmates, Remus. They’ll wonder where you go, why you miss class, how you got your scars, your bruises. It will be hard. You’ll have to lie, because I can’t be there to keep you safe. So you’ll have to protect yourself. And the best way to do that is to be very, very careful, Remus. Keep everyone at a distance. Don’t get too close. Learn everything you can, but be careful. Please.”

Remus swallowed. “I will be. I promise.”

Lyall Lupin nodded. “Then that’s all there is to say.”

The next morning, Lyall walked Remus to the train stop. He embraced his son tightly on the platform, fiercely. And as Remus stepped onto the train, and turned back to look at his father, he saw tears in his eyes.

“I love you, Remus,” Lyall said in a voice just steady enough to carry over the churning engine.

“I love you, too,” Remus replied. And with that, the train pulled away, and Lyall Lupin shrank in the distance.

 

For the most part, Remus watches. He watches his instructors attentively, partially because he is simply used to being the diligent student who stays out of trouble, but mostly because he is truly enthralled by his lessons. He watches the students from the other three houses during meals and in the corridors, wondering what separates him from them, why he was put in Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw, and if maybe that was a mistake after all. He watches the other three Gryffindor first year boys most carefully of all, because these are the three people who pose the biggest threat. Too close, too close to not see, to not wonder. So Remus is careful to keep each at a distance, and to study their faces, to understand these ticking time bombs who sleep mere meters from his four-poster bed.

James and Peter go as a pair, in Remus’ mind. They knew each other before Hogwarts, although they don’t seem to be from the same place - Peter’s accent lilts a little, thickening whenever he forgets to tighten his mouth into a neutral tone. James is bright, blindingly so; he speaks loudly and quickly, tossing words out through grinning teeth like he doesn’t have to worry about where they’ll land. He is always moving, his hands twisting and legs sprawling and hair fluttering. He takes up so much space that Peter seems to just barely slip through the cracks, and Peter typically speaks only to chime in with James. Something in Remus’ spine twinges at Peter’s presence, recognizing within that quiet boy a fellow observer, which is the kind of person to fear when you’ve got something to hide. But mostly, Peter seems to be turned inward, a nervous sort just barely clinging on to himself because he’s so concerned with clinging to a brighter star. Perhaps not a threat to Remus at all, then, as long as he stays pleasant and bland, as long as he doesn’t look like he has anything to offer. And Remus has known boys like James before, and he knows that he’ll be the easiest to hide from. The trick is simply to be dull, to laugh politely and keep out of sight, and then boys like James, they just forget about boys like Remus. Remus wonders why James hasn’t forgotten about Peter yet, but he imagines it’s only a matter of time.

And then there’s the third boy, Sirius. He speaks rarely, even less frequently than Remus himself, who keeps up pleasantries as a form of camouflage. But when Sirius does speak, it is in the clipped tones of someone who grew up knowing his place in the world and looking down from its high pedestal. But he stalks around the castle like the last man on earth, like the odd one out. Whispers dog him like a shadow; Remus has heard the older students mutter about the Sorting Hat’s big mistake. Apparently, Sirius was supposed to be in Slytherin; Remus overheard some older Slytherins discussing Sirius’ family on the way to Potions. Powerful, wealthy, pureblood, always Sorted to Slytherin. And then there’s Sirius, sent to Gryffindor, and seemingly miserable about it. Sirius spends most of his free time brooding at the window; a recent verbal sparring match with James apparently solidified Sirius’ status as an outsider in his own house. Remus almost felt bad for the boy, felt some kind of kinship to him, but Sirius snarls and lashes out like a spoiled child whenever he feels threatened, and it all seemed a bit childish to Remus. Remus can’t be sure about Sirius, though; he isn’t sure how careful he needs to be around the boy. He can’t quite read those cold eyes, but he knows that he has to keep watching.

The first few weeks went by uneventfully. Remus spent most of his spare time studying in the library, or wandering the castle, soaking up the newness of it all, the magic of this place. He avoided the dormitory as much as possible - too close, too close. The first full moon of his time at Hogwarts rose on a cloudy night, and Madam Pomfrey walked Remus to the secret passageway at the base of that angry willow tree, and he transformed in an abandoned house in the town near Hogwarts. When he woke up, he was alone, and that stung a little, but for the most part, he just tries to forget about the full moon.

Lyall writes Remus often, and Remus saves all of his father’s letters in the pages of his textbooks. Lyall never mentions the full moon, the transformations, not by name, but always ends his letters with the same words:

_I love you, Remus. Be careful._


End file.
